The Plant Loses New Chicago Beer Company

By Staff in Food on Apr 22, 2012 8:30PM

In a blow to vertical farm The Plant, New Chicago Beer Company announced last Sunday that they would no longer house their new brewery in the space. The Plant, a project of Bubbly Dynamics founder John Edel, is located in Back of the Yards.

On their website and Facebook page, New Chicago Beer Co. founders and brothers Samuel and Jesse Edwin Evans, who originally announced an opening date of March 2012, cited "unforeseen circumstances with the building’s continuing redevelopment" that would delay their launch. Although they later issued another statement that emphasized ongoing good relations with The Plant and continued enthusiasm for Edel’s project, it seems that the pace of the project was no longer realistic for the brewery.

The appeal of housing the brewery in The Plant is that the space is completely off the grid. Edel’s goal is for The Plant to create its own energy while producing no waste. The start-up costs for that kind of production are considerable, and finding a way to reuse all the waste is time consuming. Having already missed their planned March opening, the brewers said in their letter last week that they felt it was only respectful to their investors to find a space where they could open as quickly as possible.

While the Evans brothers said they are close to finalizing a deal on a new location outside of Back of the Yards, The Plant will have a harder time filling the gap. In 2011, Edel told the Chicago Reader that The Plant is about “closing loops.” The loss of the Chicago Beer Company opens up an important loop in The Plant’s system. The food businesses that operate in The Plant—Thrive Kombucha and Peerless Bread and Jam—create organic waste disposed of by an anaerobic digester. The recently-installed digester uses bacteria to break down the waste and turns it into gas, which runs through a turbine and turns into heat energy, which would have powered the brewery. The brewery would have produced spare grains, which would have fed the tilapia and plant farms. The loss of the brewery breaks the cycle that Edel had planned for The Plant, which means they will have to find a replacement.

— Caroline O'Donovan